Check Point 1:
Chosen Text - Marie de France, Lanval
Check Point 2: Book Citation:
Marie, Glyn S. Burgess, and Keith Busby. "Lanval." The Lais of Marie De France. London: Penguin, 1999. 73-81. Print. Summary:
There is a knight named Lanval who is part of King Arthur’s court. King Arthur goes away and gives gifts to all of his knights but forgets about Lanval and no one spoke nicely of him to remind King Arthur. People were envious of Lanval because he was basically perfect. The people around him liked him enough but wouldn’t seriously mourn him if he died and he is the son of a king even though he is in Arthur’s house. He is given nothing and he asks for nothing so he is sad because he doesn’t know who to turn to for help once he has spent all of his savings.
One day he had a day off and left the town, he came across a river when his horse gets sick and he is forced to stop for a break. He looks down river and sees two woman coming towards him, very beautiful woman in rich cloths of dark purple. Being so well-mannered Lanval gets up to greet them and they take him back to their lady. This lady was seemingly richer than any king and was so beautiful and pale. The two fall in love but she tells Lanval that he cannot tell anyone where he gets his gifts from or that he is in love with her or she’ll be forced to take it all away and never speak with him again. With these gifts from his lady Lanval does many great things and gets himself some friends such as Gawain.
When relaxing with some other knights and the queen, Lanval lets slip that he is in love with someone who’s chambermaid was more beautiful than the queen and upsets her, she calls him gay and then tattles to her husband, King Arthur, that Lanval was lusting after her love. Because of this Lanval is set to trial where the King wants to have him killed but waits and leaves it up to his barons because he doesn’t believe he is being level headed enough. In the time it takes the barons to come to a decision Lanval has lost all that his love has given him and he is grieving for her dearly. The Barons decide that if he can prove that this lady does exist than he can live, if he can’t than he has to be banished. Eventually she shows up and they ride off together with him on the back of her horse never to be heard from again.
Close Readings:
1.) "they were richly dressed in closely fitting tunics of dark purple and their faces were very beautiful." (Marie,73-74)
We can learn from this quote that these woman, even though they are servants, are probably pretty wealthy themselves. The color purple is often understood as a color of wealth and power, and for these two beautiful servants to be wearing such a royal color than they must be a part to someone who holds such a power. Because these woman are described so royal and beautiful looking when he first meets them, it isn't any surprise that people think the first women coming in to see the king during his trial are possibly Lanval's love, they look as if they are royalty themselves and are beautiful beyond imagination. Questions that arise from this quotation are things like who are these people to begin with? Lanval doesn't recognize them and even the servants seem like royalty to everyone in the town, so who are they? Are they of another world? They just seem to pop up out of nowhere to bring him to their lady where he falls in love on the first encounter. Where do these people come from and how do they have all of this money that Lanval even notices that the King himself wouldn't be able to afford even a part of the tent.
2.) "When he heard her, he was distressed, but not slow to reply. He said something in spite that he was often to regret" (Marie, 76)
We can learn from this quote that Lanval isn't one to really think before he speaks when something is on his mind, he seems to be one to say and then try to back track and dig himself out of a situation that he gets himself in to. This is the moment that Lanval gets himself in to trouble. Because he doesn't think before he speaks he not only offends his queen and King Arthur's wife, but he lets it be known this his love and her maids are even more beautiful and more deserving than the queen. Again, begging the question of where these people came from and who they are that even a common chamber maid might be more beautiful and worthy than the queen herself. If it wasn't for the queen coming on to Lanval and then telling the King that Lanval was coming on to her and calling Lanval gay, we would have continued with Lanval being a good knight and attributing to King Arthurs court with the wealth he was getting from his love and being able to support not only himself but to give lodgings to those passing by. If this was allowed to continue though it may have caused some tensions between himself and King Arthur because Lanval was seeming to be a better King than Arthur was with not forgetting anybody and making sure that everyone was taken care of.
3.) "... he lept in a single bound on to the palfrey behind her. He went with her to Avalon..." (Marie, 81)
This makes the whole story seem like a reverse Damsel in distress tale. We started with a knight who was from a different land and came in not knowing much or where to go for help and he finds a rich maiden who swoops in last second to save him from being banished and they ride off on the back of her horse to a place where they are never heard from again. This continues to beg the questions of me of where this woman came from? Who is she? What happened to them once they got to Avalon? Why was Lanval so useless in that situation to not be able to hold his tongue about their love? If this had been the opening I wouldn't have liked Lanval as much as I did. At first I started off feeling sorry for him that no one remembers him and then he gets saved by this overly beautiful, naked woman that no one knows where she came from or who she is. But this last bit makes Lanval almost seem like he's a dependent cry baby who can't do for himself in any way so he needs his love to give him these things so he can make a name for himself but then he screws it all up and instead of trying to really fix it he just keeps calling out for her and then rides off in to the unknown on the back of her horse.
Annotated Bibliography:
Chamberlain, David. "Marie De France's Arthurian Lai: Subtle And Political." Culture and the King: The Social Implications of the Arthurian Legend. 15-34. Albany: State U of New York P, 1994. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 18 Oct. 2014.
Chamberlain takes even a different approach. He focuses mostly on the love aspect of this story and the harshness of King Arthur. He suggests that she manipulated sources around her to make Arthur appear this way because the other two Arthurs from different writers around this time have flaws but none that would lead to her presentation of the King. He suggests that her Arthur is rather based on King Henry II because of his manors of law and succession to kinship that he argues are both themes in Lanval. This source also doesn’t seem to be doing me any good because I wish to look mostly on the romance aspect and this seems to be looking at the outside of the text legal aspects that would have been involved in forming the text. With another read through or two when I finally start writing my paper there might be a few things that I can pull out to use as evidence.
Doggett, Laine. "The Favorable Reception Of Outsiders At Court: Medieval Versions Of Cultural Exchange." Shaping Courtliness in Medieval France. 229-239. Woodbridge, England: Brewer, 2013. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 18 Oct. 2014.
Doggett seems to be taking a look at what makes a good King and has come to the conclusion that a good King is one who is very giving and kind, giving lodging to those who need it in return for their bettering his court and kingdom instead of degrading it. He compares three works on the receiving of outsiders in court and when he mentions Lanval he talks about how the King is fulfilling his duty by giving those in his court luxurious gifts but only for the most part because he completely forgets about Lanval. Doggett then goes on to talk about Lanval being an outsider that isn’t doing anything to harm King Arthurs court but he isn’t going out of his way to really make it any better.
Kong, Katherine. "Guilty As Charged? Subjectivity And The Law In La Chanson De Roland And 'Lanval'." Essays In Medieval Studies17.(2001): 35-47. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 18 Oct. 2014.
Katherine Kong is writing from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and is examining two texts of the twelfth century that deal with aspects of legitimacy, legality, and the power of sovereign (Kong, 35). Using these two texts she is thinking about how guilt and crime are configured and from this how can we understand what it was in “medieval subjectivity?” (Kong, 35) using specifically the trial section and is trying to get a grasp of individuals under a kings ruling. When I first picked this up I thought it would give me a lot about the running of everyday court manner but instead it was really just a breakdown of the other story and a few sections of Lanval, quoted and explained first in the original French and then translated in to English. She mainly argues that because Lanval is an outsider he is therefore outside of the law of King Arthur based on her copy and translations. But in the copy that I read it doesn’t seem like he is an outsider because he is living in King Arthur’s house and is taken in by his court.
Check Point 3: Annotated Bibliography: Elliott, Charlene. "Purple Pasts: Color Codification In The Ancient World." Law & Social Inquiry 33.1 (2008): 173-194. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Nov. 2014. In a quick google search of this author and the journal she has written in, this article is the first one that appears on the list and it says that, by googles tally, it has been cited ten times in similar articles. That’s ten publications that google has noticed, not including that of students like me who might be looking at her work and using it in papers and she talks about how colors are viewed now as well as in the ancient world because this was written in 2008, so it’s a relatively new text. Because it talks about the history and development of the color purple of a course of time and how it’s meaning changes. I find this interesting because of the specific mention of the color purple in the ladies chamber maids clothing. Jambeck, Karen K. "'Femmes Et Tere': Marie De France And The Discourses Of 'Lanval'." Discourses on Love, Marriage, and Transgression in Medieval and Early Modern Literature. 109-145. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2004. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 5 Nov. 2014. I found a home page for Karen K. Jambeck and she is a professor that teaches Marie de France and seems to be a reliable source for me to be looking at because she has studied this herself. I feel like, in terms of understanding the love and the legality of Lanval this source is going to be very helpful because in this chapter she covers nearly everything. From Legal Discourse and breaking it down by different sections. To Mythic Discourse and addressing it in a similar way and relating it back to the original French text of Lanval. She also has a section titled “Law, Land, and Marriage in Twelf- and Thirteenth-Century England that will be very helpful to me on the Romance aspect of things. Jurasinski, Stefan. "Treason And The Charge Of Sodomy In The Lai De Lanval." Romance Quarterly 54.4 (2007): 290-302.Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Nov. 2014. Juransinski is an associate professor at the College at Brockport with a Ph. D. and teaching and research interests in Old and Middle English, Old Icelandic, Old French, Medieval Canon Law, Medieval Secular Law, and Linguistics and Philology. Because he shows interest in and teaches what I am looking at, I feel like he would stay up to date with and know a lot about the research that is coming out about my topic and be able to talk about it in a way that a college student would be able to understand. He focuses mostly on the sexual sin that Lanval is committing by sleeping with this unnamed woman out of wedlock. Reflection: From my research I understand that scholars are concerned with the laws of this time and how they show in the text, also Lanvals relationship to the unnamed mystery woman and who she might be. The issues that are being discussed are that this woman might not be human or of this world, and if she is where did she come from and who is she? Why is it that no one knows her name when she seems to be richer than the king and why isn’t Lanval allowed to share that he is with her? And when he breaks it, why does she show up to save him in the end? Some of the views are that there is a role reversal because Laval is the one being dependent of this woman and rides off on the back of her horse when she saves him. And that he seems to need recognition from someone and it happens to be her. An approach that scholars are taking to this text is one of gender and the role reversals as I’ve mentioned before. Because this seems so odd and out of place for the time it’s a big thing that people pick up on. Query: Some questions that have occurred to me as I’ve done my research are things like, why specifically the color purple for the chamber maids? I’m very fascinated that it’s one of the only things, other than the gold statue in the tent that gets a specific color attributed to it. Going off of that I have been thinking what that might mean about the nameless lady of Lanval. I read somewhere once that the color purple had been an attribute of magical things and it makes me thing that his lady might not be of this world and I’d really like to get in to the magical elements of this text revolving around her and the color that Marie de France has chosen to use as this lady’s color and why she might be nameless. I’d also really like to look in to marriages at this time and see how this text works with that and the apparent gender role swapping of Lanval and the lady. Maybe by keeping his lady nameless it still gives Lanval, as the male character, power over her in a way that she can’t step out of even though she is more powerful than he is and he has to be saved by her. Check Point 4: Annotated Bibliography: Anderson, Earl R. "The Structure Of Sir Launfal." Papers On Language & Literature 13.2 (1977): 115. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 Nov. 2014. Earl Anderson was a professor of Old and Middle English. I will be taking in to consideration what he has to say. But he doesn’t say anything on Marie De France’s Lanval, he talks about the lies in a different story that shape who Lanval might be as a person. So because of this I will not be using this article at all in my research. Brooke, Christopher N. L. "Marriage and Society in the Central Middle Ages." Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage. New York: St. Martin's, 1982. 17-34. Print. Chris held Chairs at two University’s and was a professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge. He has edited and written many books and is a British medieval historian. I don’t think I will be using this sours at all. I found it through another sours but when I finally got a chance to look at it it’s hard for me to follow and it doesn’t seem to make much sense for me. There were some parts about how marriage functioned as a whole that might be useful if I decide to reference this text again at a later time. Howie, Cary. "Wait And See: The Ignorant Fairies Of Marie De France And Ferzan Ozpetek." Romanic Review 101.4 (2010): 823-838. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 26 Nov. 2014. He is a professor of Romance studies at Cornell University with a B.A, M.A, and Ph. D. in literature. This one, right from the title, seems like something I would use to support my argument that Lanval’s lady is an ‘other’ and that she is a magical being. It talks about waiting and how ‘others’ can’t appear unless they are asked for and his lady doesn’t appear to him until she’s asked for when he’s on trial in front of King Arthur. Abstract: This article will talk about the Magical approach to Marie De France’s Lanval and how those elements effect the story “how it might not just linger in the presence of its objects but offer itself to the lingering, languorous gaze. What might it mean, critically and poetically, to wait and see? What might such waiting look like?” (Howe, 823) The fact that Lanval has to wait periods of time before he can see his lover rises some interest for me and the fact that she doesn’t come back to him until he asks for her when he’s being tried for treason to King Arthur make me think that there is an ‘other’ element to this story. I will be arguing to prove that there is and using articles like Howe’s to support my ideas in making this decision. There isn’t a lot out there that I have been able to find, so a lot of this is going to be my own stipulation with my other research to oppose my ideas or to agree with it how I see it fit. This article will be about how the Magical element is interspersed throughout the whole story and how it effects the reading each time a reader goes back to it. With each new reading I have noticed that the magical element, at least for me, seems stronger each time. At first I just thought it was strange how things unfolded and then I started to learn about the magical elements in Mideval literature that this story started to make sense to me and each time I read the story I start to see more and more of that element revealing itself, like when Lanval meets his lady and she has more money than even the King. At this time people would know who you were if you had money, especially if you had more than the king, and no one knows who this woman is. Argument Against a Source: I would like to disagree with Jambeck’s notion that some of this may be based off of Celtic myths. He makes a strong argument and ties it very well to the story, but he also makes it sound like Marie wrote this story with those connections in mind but doesn’t say how or why that might be. I don’t think Marie would have known about those myths at this time because they weren’t something ever brought up before this article. I don’t know how Marie would have known about these myths or goddesses or other religions unless she had studied them or heard about them. And it’s possible but I haven’t found anything else that might suggest that she has done just that. But I also haven’t looked deeply in to it, only what my other articles have suggested and none have suggested this. But like I mentioned earlier, Jambeck does make a good, solid connection between the two and if he had been able to share how Marie may have learned this information to be able to write about these myths and these goddesses I don’t think I would have such an issue with his bit of research and I would actually take it more in to consideration that the others because it’s something that she would have taken in to account. But because he cannot, or rather he does not, tell how she would know this I believe it to be just stipulation and therefore not as valuable to me.
Chosen Text - Marie de France, Lanval
Check Point 2:
Book Citation:
Marie, Glyn S. Burgess, and Keith Busby. "Lanval." The Lais of Marie De France. London: Penguin, 1999. 73-81. Print.
Summary:
There is a knight named Lanval who is part of King Arthur’s court. King Arthur goes away and gives gifts to all of his knights but forgets about Lanval and no one spoke nicely of him to remind King Arthur. People were envious of Lanval because he was basically perfect. The people around him liked him enough but wouldn’t seriously mourn him if he died and he is the son of a king even though he is in Arthur’s house. He is given nothing and he asks for nothing so he is sad because he doesn’t know who to turn to for help once he has spent all of his savings.
One day he had a day off and left the town, he came across a river when his horse gets sick and he is forced to stop for a break. He looks down river and sees two woman coming towards him, very beautiful woman in rich cloths of dark purple. Being so well-mannered Lanval gets up to greet them and they take him back to their lady. This lady was seemingly richer than any king and was so beautiful and pale. The two fall in love but she tells Lanval that he cannot tell anyone where he gets his gifts from or that he is in love with her or she’ll be forced to take it all away and never speak with him again. With these gifts from his lady Lanval does many great things and gets himself some friends such as Gawain.
When relaxing with some other knights and the queen, Lanval lets slip that he is in love with someone who’s chambermaid was more beautiful than the queen and upsets her, she calls him gay and then tattles to her husband, King Arthur, that Lanval was lusting after her love. Because of this Lanval is set to trial where the King wants to have him killed but waits and leaves it up to his barons because he doesn’t believe he is being level headed enough. In the time it takes the barons to come to a decision Lanval has lost all that his love has given him and he is grieving for her dearly. The Barons decide that if he can prove that this lady does exist than he can live, if he can’t than he has to be banished. Eventually she shows up and they ride off together with him on the back of her horse never to be heard from again.
Close Readings:
1.) "they were richly dressed in closely fitting tunics of dark purple and their faces were very beautiful." (Marie,73-74)
We can learn from this quote that these woman, even though they are servants, are probably pretty wealthy themselves. The color purple is often understood as a color of wealth and power, and for these two beautiful servants to be wearing such a royal color than they must be a part to someone who holds such a power. Because these woman are described so royal and beautiful looking when he first meets them, it isn't any surprise that people think the first women coming in to see the king during his trial are possibly Lanval's love, they look as if they are royalty themselves and are beautiful beyond imagination. Questions that arise from this quotation are things like who are these people to begin with? Lanval doesn't recognize them and even the servants seem like royalty to everyone in the town, so who are they? Are they of another world? They just seem to pop up out of nowhere to bring him to their lady where he falls in love on the first encounter. Where do these people come from and how do they have all of this money that Lanval even notices that the King himself wouldn't be able to afford even a part of the tent.
2.) "When he heard her, he was distressed, but not slow to reply. He said something in spite that he was often to regret" (Marie, 76)
We can learn from this quote that Lanval isn't one to really think before he speaks when something is on his mind, he seems to be one to say and then try to back track and dig himself out of a situation that he gets himself in to. This is the moment that Lanval gets himself in to trouble. Because he doesn't think before he speaks he not only offends his queen and King Arthur's wife, but he lets it be known this his love and her maids are even more beautiful and more deserving than the queen. Again, begging the question of where these people came from and who they are that even a common chamber maid might be more beautiful and worthy than the queen herself. If it wasn't for the queen coming on to Lanval and then telling the King that Lanval was coming on to her and calling Lanval gay, we would have continued with Lanval being a good knight and attributing to King Arthurs court with the wealth he was getting from his love and being able to support not only himself but to give lodgings to those passing by. If this was allowed to continue though it may have caused some tensions between himself and King Arthur because Lanval was seeming to be a better King than Arthur was with not forgetting anybody and making sure that everyone was taken care of.
3.) "... he lept in a single bound on to the palfrey behind her. He went with her to Avalon..." (Marie, 81)
This makes the whole story seem like a reverse Damsel in distress tale. We started with a knight who was from a different land and came in not knowing much or where to go for help and he finds a rich maiden who swoops in last second to save him from being banished and they ride off on the back of her horse to a place where they are never heard from again. This continues to beg the questions of me of where this woman came from? Who is she? What happened to them once they got to Avalon? Why was Lanval so useless in that situation to not be able to hold his tongue about their love? If this had been the opening I wouldn't have liked Lanval as much as I did. At first I started off feeling sorry for him that no one remembers him and then he gets saved by this overly beautiful, naked woman that no one knows where she came from or who she is. But this last bit makes Lanval almost seem like he's a dependent cry baby who can't do for himself in any way so he needs his love to give him these things so he can make a name for himself but then he screws it all up and instead of trying to really fix it he just keeps calling out for her and then rides off in to the unknown on the back of her horse.
Annotated Bibliography:
Chamberlain, David. "Marie De France's Arthurian Lai: Subtle And Political." Culture and the King: The Social Implications of the Arthurian Legend. 15-34. Albany: State U of New York P, 1994. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 18 Oct. 2014.
Chamberlain takes even a different approach. He focuses mostly on the love aspect of this story and the harshness of King Arthur. He suggests that she manipulated sources around her to make Arthur appear this way because the other two Arthurs from different writers around this time have flaws but none that would lead to her presentation of the King. He suggests that her Arthur is rather based on King Henry II because of his manors of law and succession to kinship that he argues are both themes in Lanval. This source also doesn’t seem to be doing me any good because I wish to look mostly on the romance aspect and this seems to be looking at the outside of the text legal aspects that would have been involved in forming the text. With another read through or two when I finally start writing my paper there might be a few things that I can pull out to use as evidence.
Doggett, Laine. "The Favorable Reception Of Outsiders At Court: Medieval Versions Of Cultural Exchange." Shaping Courtliness in Medieval France. 229-239. Woodbridge, England: Brewer, 2013. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 18 Oct. 2014.
Doggett seems to be taking a look at what makes a good King and has come to the conclusion that a good King is one who is very giving and kind, giving lodging to those who need it in return for their bettering his court and kingdom instead of degrading it. He compares three works on the receiving of outsiders in court and when he mentions Lanval he talks about how the King is fulfilling his duty by giving those in his court luxurious gifts but only for the most part because he completely forgets about Lanval. Doggett then goes on to talk about Lanval being an outsider that isn’t doing anything to harm King Arthurs court but he isn’t going out of his way to really make it any better.
Kong, Katherine. "Guilty As Charged? Subjectivity And The Law In La Chanson De Roland And 'Lanval'." Essays In Medieval Studies17.(2001): 35-47. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 18 Oct. 2014.
Katherine Kong is writing from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and is examining two texts of the twelfth century that deal with aspects of legitimacy, legality, and the power of sovereign (Kong, 35). Using these two texts she is thinking about how guilt and crime are configured and from this how can we understand what it was in “medieval subjectivity?” (Kong, 35) using specifically the trial section and is trying to get a grasp of individuals under a kings ruling. When I first picked this up I thought it would give me a lot about the running of everyday court manner but instead it was really just a breakdown of the other story and a few sections of Lanval, quoted and explained first in the original French and then translated in to English. She mainly argues that because Lanval is an outsider he is therefore outside of the law of King Arthur based on her copy and translations. But in the copy that I read it doesn’t seem like he is an outsider because he is living in King Arthur’s house and is taken in by his court.
Check Point 3:
Annotated Bibliography:
Elliott, Charlene. "Purple Pasts: Color Codification In The Ancient World." Law & Social Inquiry 33.1 (2008): 173-194. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Nov. 2014.
In a quick google search of this author and the journal she has written in, this article is the first one that appears on the list and it says that, by googles tally, it has been cited ten times in similar articles. That’s ten publications that google has noticed, not including that of students like me who might be looking at her work and using it in papers and she talks about how colors are viewed now as well as in the ancient world because this was written in 2008, so it’s a relatively new text. Because it talks about the history and development of the color purple of a course of time and how it’s meaning changes. I find this interesting because of the specific mention of the color purple in the ladies chamber maids clothing.
Jambeck, Karen K. "'Femmes Et Tere': Marie De France And The Discourses Of 'Lanval'." Discourses on Love, Marriage, and Transgression in Medieval and Early Modern Literature. 109-145. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2004. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 5 Nov. 2014.
I found a home page for Karen K. Jambeck and she is a professor that teaches Marie de France and seems to be a reliable source for me to be looking at because she has studied this herself. I feel like, in terms of understanding the love and the legality of Lanval this source is going to be very helpful because in this chapter she covers nearly everything. From Legal Discourse and breaking it down by different sections. To Mythic Discourse and addressing it in a similar way and relating it back to the original French text of Lanval. She also has a section titled “Law, Land, and Marriage in Twelf- and Thirteenth-Century England that will be very helpful to me on the Romance aspect of things.
Jurasinski, Stefan. "Treason And The Charge Of Sodomy In The Lai De Lanval." Romance Quarterly 54.4 (2007): 290-302.Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Nov. 2014.
Juransinski is an associate professor at the College at Brockport with a Ph. D. and teaching and research interests in Old and Middle English, Old Icelandic, Old French, Medieval Canon Law, Medieval Secular Law, and Linguistics and Philology. Because he shows interest in and teaches what I am looking at, I feel like he would stay up to date with and know a lot about the research that is coming out about my topic and be able to talk about it in a way that a college student would be able to understand. He focuses mostly on the sexual sin that Lanval is committing by sleeping with this unnamed woman out of wedlock.
Reflection:
From my research I understand that scholars are concerned with the laws of this time and how they show in the text, also Lanvals relationship to the unnamed mystery woman and who she might be. The issues that are being discussed are that this woman might not be human or of this world, and if she is where did she come from and who is she? Why is it that no one knows her name when she seems to be richer than the king and why isn’t Lanval allowed to share that he is with her? And when he breaks it, why does she show up to save him in the end? Some of the views are that there is a role reversal because Laval is the one being dependent of this woman and rides off on the back of her horse when she saves him. And that he seems to need recognition from someone and it happens to be her. An approach that scholars are taking to this text is one of gender and the role reversals as I’ve mentioned before. Because this seems so odd and out of place for the time it’s a big thing that people pick up on.
Query:
Some questions that have occurred to me as I’ve done my research are things like, why specifically the color purple for the chamber maids? I’m very fascinated that it’s one of the only things, other than the gold statue in the tent that gets a specific color attributed to it. Going off of that I have been thinking what that might mean about the nameless lady of Lanval. I read somewhere once that the color purple had been an attribute of magical things and it makes me thing that his lady might not be of this world and I’d really like to get in to the magical elements of this text revolving around her and the color that Marie de France has chosen to use as this lady’s color and why she might be nameless. I’d also really like to look in to marriages at this time and see how this text works with that and the apparent gender role swapping of Lanval and the lady. Maybe by keeping his lady nameless it still gives Lanval, as the male character, power over her in a way that she can’t step out of even though she is more powerful than he is and he has to be saved by her.
Check Point 4:
Annotated Bibliography:
Anderson, Earl R. "The Structure Of Sir Launfal." Papers On Language & Literature 13.2 (1977): 115. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 Nov. 2014.
Earl Anderson was a professor of Old and Middle English. I will be taking in to consideration what he has to say. But he doesn’t say anything on Marie De France’s Lanval, he talks about the lies in a different story that shape who Lanval might be as a person. So because of this I will not be using this article at all in my research.
Brooke, Christopher N. L. "Marriage and Society in the Central Middle Ages." Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage. New York: St. Martin's, 1982. 17-34. Print.
Chris held Chairs at two University’s and was a professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge. He has edited and written many books and is a British medieval historian. I don’t think I will be using this sours at all. I found it through another sours but when I finally got a chance to look at it it’s hard for me to follow and it doesn’t seem to make much sense for me. There were some parts about how marriage functioned as a whole that might be useful if I decide to reference this text again at a later time.
Howie, Cary. "Wait And See: The Ignorant Fairies Of Marie De France And Ferzan Ozpetek." Romanic Review 101.4 (2010): 823-838. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 26 Nov. 2014.
He is a professor of Romance studies at Cornell University with a B.A, M.A, and Ph. D. in literature. This one, right from the title, seems like something I would use to support my argument that Lanval’s lady is an ‘other’ and that she is a magical being. It talks about waiting and how ‘others’ can’t appear unless they are asked for and his lady doesn’t appear to him until she’s asked for when he’s on trial in front of King Arthur.
Abstract:
This article will talk about the Magical approach to Marie De France’s Lanval and how those elements effect the story “how it might not just linger in the presence of its objects but offer
itself to the lingering, languorous gaze. What might it mean, critically and
poetically, to wait and see? What might such waiting look like?” (Howe, 823) The fact that Lanval has to wait periods of time before he can see his lover rises some interest for me and the fact that she doesn’t come back to him until he asks for her when he’s being tried for treason to King Arthur make me think that there is an ‘other’ element to this story. I will be arguing to prove that there is and using articles like Howe’s to support my ideas in making this decision. There isn’t a lot out there that I have been able to find, so a lot of this is going to be my own stipulation with my other research to oppose my ideas or to agree with it how I see it fit. This article will be about how the Magical element is interspersed throughout the whole story and how it effects the reading each time a reader goes back to it. With each new reading I have noticed that the magical element, at least for me, seems stronger each time. At first I just thought it was strange how things unfolded and then I started to learn about the magical elements in Mideval literature that this story started to make sense to me and each time I read the story I start to see more and more of that element revealing itself, like when Lanval meets his lady and she has more money than even the King. At this time people would know who you were if you had money, especially if you had more than the king, and no one knows who this woman is.
Argument Against a Source:
I would like to disagree with Jambeck’s notion that some of this may be based off of Celtic myths. He makes a strong argument and ties it very well to the story, but he also makes it sound like Marie wrote this story with those connections in mind but doesn’t say how or why that might be. I don’t think Marie would have known about those myths at this time because they weren’t something ever brought up before this article. I don’t know how Marie would have known about these myths or goddesses or other religions unless she had studied them or heard about them. And it’s possible but I haven’t found anything else that might suggest that she has done just that. But I also haven’t looked deeply in to it, only what my other articles have suggested and none have suggested this. But like I mentioned earlier, Jambeck does make a good, solid connection between the two and if he had been able to share how Marie may have learned this information to be able to write about these myths and these goddesses I don’t think I would have such an issue with his bit of research and I would actually take it more in to consideration that the others because it’s something that she would have taken in to account. But because he cannot, or rather he does not, tell how she would know this I believe it to be just stipulation and therefore not as valuable to me.